Part I: #TAKEMEANYWHERE

Jacky’s adventure was part of #TAKEMEANYWHERE, a project organized by the artistic trio of Shia LaBeouf, Nastja Säde Rönkkö, and Luke Turner. Together, they go by the band name “LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner.”

From May 23rd to June 23rd, 2016, LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner hitchhiked across the country. During their project, the artists periodically posted their GPS coordinates and the hashtag #TAKEMEANYWHERE on their Twitter page, @thecampaignbook. After they posted their coordinates, they waited at that location for a ride, and whoever first picked them up was allowed to take the three artists wherever he or she wanted. The artists’ trip and experiences were determined by the projects’ participants – particularly those who could arrive at posted coordinates the fastest. Some people on Twitter have suggested that #TAKEMEANYWHERE might best be thought of as “social media hitchhiking.”

Nastja, Shia & Luke

The project was supported in part by VICE, and the artists’ route was often (though not always) tracked in real time on the website http://takemeanywhere.vice.com. Going on the website, you could see a map of the world on which a small dot, representing the artists, would slowly inch along. The artists’ trail remained marked out on the map as well, and anyone could see where they had been. That was how Jacky tracked them. She was encouraged to track them by looking at the artists’ map-in-progress.

#TAKEMEANYWHERE map

The artists began their journey near Boulder, Colorado, where they had recently given a presentation and participated in a question-and-answer session at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, as part of the museum’s series of events called MediaLive: Corruption. As they hitchhiked, the artists made their way from Colorado out into Kansas and the Midwest, before returning back through Colorado, west over the mountains, and south into Arizona. The artists then traveled from Arizona straight across the country to New Orleans and Florida, before heading north as far as Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They headed due west, where Jacky met them as they crossed Lake Michigan. The artists hitchhiked across the country to Montana, Wyoming, and Washington State. They then headed north into Canada, stopping Vancouver and Alberta, before finally catching a flight to Alaska, where their project ended.

During their month long project, the three artists carried around a video camera, which they frequently used to capture their adventures. Together, they are creating a film which will be displayed at the Finnish Institute in London and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, which together commissioned the project.